Is this a community of a bunch of children? What is this?

Human nature, regardless of political systems, dictates that one and their family must provide trade-worthy value to receive trade-worthy value. There are plenty of exceptions to that thanks to charity (at any scale) and social policies that allow for some to provide little trade-worthy value and still receive essential benefits (for example, those with disabilities). But if there were an option to provide no trade-worthy value and receive completely satisfying goods, accommodations, and freedoms in return, then productive people would naturally feel foolish for spending time working any more than they like to. There is some point where there wouldn’t be enough people to maintain the benefits for the non-workers. Although people would offer to work as good will, labor and supply shortages would be far more frequent or constant. So should we allow the option, but only a limited amount so that the threshold of value-produced to value-consumed is never met? It’s unlikely that there would be good relations between the class of people in society that would be gifted with that option and those that aren’t.

It is unfortunate that this anti-work rhetoric often comes off as outrageous, when in reality it isn’t. I don’t know if the people doing it are intentionally trying to be controversial, or if they just are not good at communicating.

When we complain about work, this doesn’t mean that we are asking for a world where we lounge all day at home, and expect that food, shelter and entertainment are magically delivered to us without any regard to how it happens. No, anti-work is not about a blind sense of entitlement. But that is how a lot of these posts come off as, even if their authors don’t intend it.

Anti-work is a recognition that the working class works way too damn much; so much more than we need to to have a functioning society with everyone living happily and having their needs met. There’s so much inefficiency in capitalism, with aims to drive more capital to the wealthy, and working around other stupidities of capitalism (check out the book “Bullshit jobs” for examples). The ruling class holds hostage the world’s resources, and requires you to give them a large portion of your life to get even the minimum needed to sustain your living. Now that is outrageous.

I think the alternative is living out in the wild, fending for yourself. As much as I hate the inequality and mediocrity of modern life, it’s something of a step up from living like that. I love watching Primitive Technology, but I probably couldn’t handle that life. Imagine spending hours collecting fire wood, spending hours/days turning it into charcoal and building a clay oven just to fire up some shit you picked up from the river in hopes of getting a few globules of iron, to make like a small shank or a spear tip or something (after maybe weeks of effort). Oh, and you’re having to get your own food and maybe bathe yourself every so often. Super interesting to watch, but holy shit is that alot of work for so little (compared to what we’re used to seeing). Life is work.

Why the FUCK do you think you’re entitled to get the free labor of bakeries working hard to make bread, farmers farming to create food, and people building technology to make your life easier?

No, you don’t have to work. Go live in the forest and farm your own food. Maybe then when a lion attacks you you’ll realize the value of modern civilization.

Who’s going to take care of you?

Are we owed anything simply by being born?

Good luck finding a sucker to subsidize you and your lazy ass.

“Hello, I would like to benefit from society without contributing to it”

Pretty sure in the old days, when there were fewer people, you could just fuck off into the forest and build yourself a cottage. If your feudal lord found out you’d be in trouble, but they didn’t have satellites or whatnot to track you down.

We have this weird unwritten assumption that the cost of technological advancement (esp medical) was our own domestication. That we sacrificed freedom and privacy for health and safety. I wonder if that’s really the case, or if it’s some bullshit post hoc justification